


His Light

by Newtella



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Illness, Modern AU, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7725427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtella/pseuds/Newtella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurogane is organized; he does things in advance. His neighbor Fay is impulsive as all hell. But when Fay turns out to have emotional baggage that even Kurogane can't plan for, the two of them must find a solution that can save both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2016 KuroFay Olympics! I was on the Light Team and and given the prompt "The Eleventh Hour." Thank you to my coach, Koi, and all the wonderful other people who wrote fics for this year's Olympics!

Kurogane prided himself on being the sort of man who planned things, who did things in advance. He had dreamed as a boy of becoming a fencer, so he pursued years of training, of careful study and application. He picked out all his outfits the night before he went anywhere, implementing the fashion tips he’d picked up from his designer cousin. He always turned in his apartment’s rent on time.

But there were some things even Kurogane couldn’t plan for. For example, he couldn’t predict his next-door neighbor at all. Fay would show up at his apartment’s front door at all hours of the day—and night—with no warning whatsoever, just to say hi. Fay would bake huge pans of dairy-free lasagna and leave them at Kurogane’s doorstep with a note that read “for dinner,” when Kurogane had already planned what he was going to cook that night. Fay would call Kurogane when he was at work, which was probably the most infuriating of all. Kurogane wouldn’t answer his phone and would inevitably receive about ten pouty texts along the lines of “dont you love me kuro-rin???? :CCCC,” to which Kurogane would furiously text back, every time, “If you want to make sure I’m there, we have to set a time _in advance_.”

Of course, nothing caught Kurogane more off-guard than the time he came home to see Fay standing on the balcony outside his sixth story window, ready to jump.

“Blondie,” Kurogane murmured, and then, when he realized that Fay couldn’t possibly hear him: “BLONDIE!” he screamed, waving his arms in a mad attempt to grab his neighbor’s attention.

Fay didn’t respond. Strands of hair blew past his face as the honking roar of rush hour traffic drowned out all other noise. He was wearing a crop top and lacy shorts, doing his utmost to look adorable, harmless, innocent until the very end. There were tear streaks on his face. He was holding his phone.

 _He was holding his phone_. Kurogane’s hand was shaking like an addict in withdrawal as he tapped in the number, Fay’s number, smashing the phone up against his ear. It rang. He breathed. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea what he would do if Fay didn’t pick up, but he _certainly_ didn’t know what to say if Fay did. He had lived next to Fay for almost two years now, and he had never expected this. He had never met anyone suicidal in his life. He had no precedent. He had no plan.

Fay picked up the phone.

“Kuro-pop?” Kurogane couldn’t see Fay’s face from so far beneath him, but he could hear each wet, choked out syllable. And then there was a tight, awkward laugh. He was trying so hard to seem happy even now. “H-hi! What’s going on? Not that I’m ever not happy to hear your rich and smoky voice, Kuro-tan, but I’m just the teensiest bit busy right now, so maybe we should set a time to talk in the future and—”

“Cut the crap,” Kurogane said, and he was alarmed to realize that his voice was shaking, too. “Get down from that ledge. Now.”

The line went quiet. And then Fay crackled another uneasy laugh. “W-what? I’m not on any ledge. You must be mistaking me for someone else, Kuro-rin. My twin brother, m-maybe, people get us confused all the time—”

“You never mentioned a brother.”

“O-oh! Didn’t I? I can be so forgetful sometimes! Silly me!”

“Blondie. _Get down from that ledge_.”

Fay hung his head. “I don’t deserve to live, Kuro-puu.”

Kurogane wracked his brain for something, anything to save him. Where was this coming from? Why did Fay want to _die_?! It would help so much if he knew. “Blondie. Get down and go inside. I’ll be at your place in two minutes. We can… talk.”

“Thank you. You’re so kind. But I don’t deserve that kindness.”

“ _Why?_ ”

As Kurogane watched, Fay lowered his arm. He held his phone at his side, and he let the breeze blow his hair past his eyes. He took one step off the balcony.

Kurogane’s heart was beating so hard it felt like it might break his chest and he was watching but there was nothing, nothing he could do. He was desperate, because Fay was at stake but also because “too late to act” was not a role that Kurogane ever wanted to play.

Kurogane held his breath.

And then Fay took another step.

Backwards.

He went inside.

Kurogane could only hear the frantic thumping of his own feet as he pounded them into the pavement, into the tiled lobby floor of their apartment building and up six flights of stairs. He stumbled down the hallway to hammer on Fay’s door, and when Fay opened it, he was smiling.

“Kuro-chan,” Fay said. He wiped at his eyes with the back of a scarred—had there always been scars on his fingertips? Kurogane had never noticed them before—hand. Fay sounded exhausted. He opened his door wider to allow Kurogane inside. “I didn’t expect to see you today. You never answered my texts.”

Heartbeat jagged and racing, Kurogane stepped inside Fay’s apartment and shut the door behind him. He pulled out his phone. _12 new texts from Fay Flourite,_ was the message that greeted him on the screen. He swiped it across to read them.

“hiiiiiiii kuro-chama!!!!! <3 <3 <3 do u wanna get dinner with me later????? i know this is last minute and u hate that but i just miss u so much haha im the worst text back asap!!”

“hey kuro-rinta! did u get my last text? is kuro-puppy ignoring me????? im just so lonely rn call me pls!!!”

“heyyyyy kuro-pup! r u busy rn? i know im like the most annoying person of all time but U LOVE ME ANYWAY RIGHT anyway text me back okay!!!!”

“kuro-chin i know ur just my neighbor like were probs not even that close lol but IM SO BORED PLS TEXT ME OK IM GONNA KEEP TEXTING YOU UNTIL YOU DO”

They were all along the same lines. Kurogane scrolled through them, a lump settling in his stomach that made him feel ill.

Finally he looked up. He shoved the phone in Fay’s face, one last text displayed across the screen: “ok kuro-ron i guess were not gonna do dinner lol thats ok bye!!!!!” Kurogane’s eyes were accusing, his tone cold. “Were you going to kill yourself because I didn’t fucking text you back?”

Fay’s smile grew quieter then. “I guess I was just feeling a little down today, that’s all. I was selfish enough to want someone to talk to.”

“Blondie. I was _at work_. You _know I can’t respond when I’m working._ If you needed to talk, why didn’t you plan. A. Time. In. ADVANCE?!”

Fay chuckled darkly. “Can _you_ plan in advance when you’re going to feel really sad?”

Kurogane wrung his hands helplessly. “I didn’t know you get like this. Why didn’t you tell me you get like this? I could have helped you—if I’d known—if you’d fucking _told_ me _something_ —”

“I _tried_ to tell you! I texted you, didn’t I?”

“BLONDIE.” Biting back the urge to shout, Kurogane grabbed Fay’s wrist and dragged him into the apartment’s living room. He pushed him onto the couch, then took a deep breath. “What’s wrong with you. Tell me.”

Fay scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things, I suppose. But it isn’t really serious.”

“You tried to jump off a building.”

“Well… today wasn’t a very good day for me, okay? It’s the anniversary of things… I’d really like to forget.”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, you don’t want to hear it! I’m sure it’d be really bori—”

Fay cut off, because Kurogane’s eyes were boring directly into him. “I need you to tell me so that I know for next time. This can’t happen again. It can’t.”

Something about the sureness with which Kurogane spoke, the stone-cold conviction in his red eyes, must have convinced Fay to open up. Something must have told Fay that once Kurogane decided to do something, he refused to rest until he’d succeeded.

And so Fay detailed a horrific and traumatic childhood for Kurogane’s ears. There was a twin brother who had killed himself, an abusive father who had snapped, and thirteen years of crushing, incapacitating guilt. Kurogane sat silently beside him, taking it all in. He held Fay’s hand.

Finally, once Fay had wiped yet another batch of tears away from his bright blue eyes, he sniffled and attested, “Today’s the day he died, when we were ten. So I guess… today I felt worse than usual about it? That I couldn’t save him?”

Lots of things to say ran through Kurogane’s mind. He had no idea which would be helpful and which would not. For example: It sounds like depression runs in your family. For example: It wasn’t your fault. For example: I want to stab your dad through the heart for what he put you through, and for example: if you’d killed yourself today, you idiot, _I_ would be the one feeling guilty as hell. What he said instead was: “So this is a regular thing. Your symptoms getting worse the day he died.”

Fay frowned. “Well, yeah, usually. But that doesn’t really make it any easier, aha…”

“So we could have predicted this. And we can predict when it’ll happen next time.”

An expression flitted across Fay’s face, one that Kurogane wasn’t sure he’d seen there before. Was it… displeasure? Disappointment? Disdain? “You don’t understand, Kuro-run. That’s okay, I mean, I don’t expect you to, but… I feel this way almost every day. It’s sort of off and on constantly.”

“Then what can I do?” asked Kurogane. “I can’t be at my phone constantly. I have to know when to help.”

“I mean, I could start feeling like I want to die any time, so…” Fay played with his hands, touching one scarred fingertip to another. When he looked back at Kurogane, his lips were pulled into a brilliant counterfeit smile. “I guess we’ll just have to learn how to improvise.”

*******

It was difficult. Kurogane couldn’t deny that. He had to start sleeping with his phone’s ringer turned up as loud as possible, and he had to learn to deal with Fay’s panic-stricken tears at 3 am, begging him for some reason to stay alive. He had to check his phone during his bathroom breaks at the office, to excuse himself from dinners with Tomoyo to pop upstairs and make sure Fay was okay. He had to spend long hours when he could have been unwinding, coaxing Fay down from self-hatred or self-harm. It was exhausting. He was exhausted.

And as the days flew by, he could feel himself growing tenser. He drank more than usual, because it was the only way to distract himself from the thoughts that consumed him. What if he got too engrossed in his manga and Fay stepped off a building? What if he was busy in a meeting and Fay slit his wrists? What if he expressed affection for Tomoyo and Fay believed that Kurogane loved her just a bit more than he loved Fay, a lot more than he loved Fay, to the point where he had no room in his heart for Fay at all?

And so Kurogane did what he did best in times of trouble: he concocted a plan.

“Do you like the mac ’n’ cheese, Kuro-yum?” Fay asked cheerfully, swinging his legs off the edge of his chair as he spooned the creamy pasta into his mouth. “I had lots of fun making it, even though I had to use gross fake cheese for yours!”

“This isn’t working,” said Kurogane. He took a swig of sake before clarifying, “You need a plan B.”

Fay pouted. “What? Kuro-pun doesn’t like the fake mac ’n’ cheese I made him? That’s super rude! I mean, I know soy cheese is really yucky, but I thought lactose intolerant people liked that stuff!”

“Not what I meant. You need a plan B when it comes to your issues. You need someone else you can contact if I’m not there.”

For a moment, Fay didn’t respond. He looked down at his plate, mushing around the cheese with his fork. “Is Kuro-tan… saying he can’t be there for me anymore? I mean, I totally understand! Who would ever want to spend so much time just for me, right?”

“Shut up! You know what I meant!” Kurogane valiantly resisted the urge to stab Fay’s table with his butter knife. He took another drink instead. “I just meant I need to be able to do shit, blondie. I need to be able to have a life and not worry that it’s going to cause you to kill yourself. Understood?”

“O-okay. I’m sorry I’m such a burden… Who did you have in mind?”

This was the hard part. “I think… maybe you should see a therapist.”

Predictably, Fay’s smile grew twisted at those words. “You think I’m crazy.”

“Blondie.”

“You want me to stop bothering you and leave you alone.”

“BLONDIE.”

“You want me to die because a therapist means I would have regular appointments and sometimes I’m gonna really, really want to kill myself when I’m not at an appointment and you won’t be there to help me through it so I’ll just have to kill myself because I don’t deserve to live because I’m the reason my brother is—”

Kurogane _did_ stab the table. “I WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE SAFE BECAUSE I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU, YOU _IDIOT_.”

Fay stared.

Kurogane crossed his arms and looked away. He hadn’t meant to say that. It was true, of course—Kurogane couldn’t think of anything truer in the whole world than the fact that he loved Fay—but saying it loud had been a whim, an impulse. He wasn’t sure now was the right time to tell him. He wasn’t sure any time would _ever_ be the right time to tell him.

To his surprise, Fay’s mouth spread into the first real smile Kurogane had ever seen him use. “Oh, Kuro-chan. I love you too.”

Unexpectedly, Kurogane felt a burst of warmth explode in the pit of his chest, and expand to fill all parts of him. He hadn’t really expected Fay to feel the same way. It had just seemed like too big a coincidence, for Fay to love him back, a fairytale with a happy ending that was all too convenient to be true. Kurogane wasn’t sure he believed in the hero marrying the princess, in well wrapped up happily ever afters.

Learning that a happy ending might be his was the best feeling in the world.

******

And so Fay began seeing a therapist, in regular sessions on Tuesday and Friday mornings. As a guy who made a living by performing silly magic tricks at children’s birthday parties, he complained constantly about being dragged out of bed as early as 10 am, about the routine mundanity of scheduled appointments, when he was used to never knowing when his next obligation would be.

Fay sounded more confident, little by little, when Kurogane called him on the phone. There were fewer and fewer late night emergencies, more snuggling in movie theaters and less Kurogane yanking a razor out of his hands. Fay surprised Kurogane one day with a hand-made card, covered in badly drawn animals and a message thanking him for being his light in a life full of darkness. Fay was letting loose real smiles more often. Fay was eating more and drinking less and when the one-year mark rolled around, he spent the day of his brother’s death at his grave. He cried into Kurogane’s T-shirt and baked a cake in his brother’s honor. He didn’t mention the words “my fault” once.

So why didn’t Kurogane’s pulse stop racing? Why did he still wake up in cold sweats, consumed with panic that one floor above him, Fay was dying? Why did he check his phone every five minutes, sweep every inch of Fay’s apartment with his eyes in search of razors, and begin to doubt the words “I’m okay” every time they left his boyfriend’s lips? Why did Kurogane still hear the words, repeated over and over in his head until they were a mantra, as predictable as fencing practice or his 9 to 5: Fay’s going to die and it’s going to be my fault, my fault, my fault.

He didn’t know why he felt this way, and he didn’t know how to make it stop. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this, so he tipped back a bottle of sake and drank.

Until the day when Fay closed his hands around the bottleneck, inches away from Kurogane’s lips. Meeting his boyfriend’s eyes, Fay gently guided the bottled back onto the table. “I think you’ve had enough, Kuro-rin.”

“That’s not for you to say,” said Kurogane gruffly, imagining Fay smashing the bottle against the table and using one of the broken shards of glass to slit his own throat. “Back off, blondie. I’m thirsty.”

Fay paused, apparently taking the moment to carefully choose his words. “I think lately you’ve been drinking a lot more than you did when we met. Is this because of me?”

Fuck. Now Fay was going to hate himself for hurting Kurogane, wasn’t he? “Why the hell would it be because of you?” Kurogane asked, trying his best to make his contempt for the idea convincing.

Fay sighed. “I know I’m not an easy boyfriend to have, Kurogane. But I’ve been doing a lot better lately, and it’s mostly thanks to you. I just wish you could enjoy that with me.”

Kurogane’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean.”

“You know what I mean.” Fay traced patterns onto the table with a fingertip. “I just wish maybe… you could see a therapist too? That way we could both work on getting better.”

“I don’t need to get better,” Kurogane snarled. “I’m _fine_.”

“I’m serious, Kuro-tan! Your pain is important too,” said Fay, and there was real passion behind his words. “I know you’ve been drinking so much because you’re in a lot of pain. But you shouldn’t feel like you need to hide it, especially not from me.”

“So what if I drink?” Kurogane demanded. He clutched the bottle of sake close to his chest, like a perverse safety blanket he wasn’t grown-up enough to give up. “I like booze, so what? It’s not like I’m a fucking alcoholic.”

“I know you’re not,” said Fay firmly. “So I want to plan ahead. I want to stop this before you get to that point. I want to help you before you become what I used to be.”

“You don’t understand,” said Kurogane, desperation seeping into his tone. “I can’t have some idiot therapist telling me to let my guard down. I need to protect you. I’m your light in the darkness or whatever that crap was you said.”

“I know,” said Fay gently, and when he looked at Kurogane, there was real love in his eyes. “But you shouldn’t have to be. I don’t want to be a darkness you have to fight your way through. I want us to be light together.”

And then he held out his hand. “Give me the sake, please.”

Kurogane grumbled. He grimaced. He ground his teeth and glared.

He handed Fay the bottle.

The next day, Fay went through his apartment and threw out every single one.

******

“Happy anniversary!” cried Fay, throwing his arms around Kurogane the moment he opened his apartment’s door. Fay had come straight from work, Kurogane noticed: he was still wearing his magician’s tux and top hat, and he immediately tooted a party horn right in Kurogane’s face. When he was finished with all the theatrics and Kurogane got all his eye rolling out of the way, Fay gushed, “Wow, we’ve been together a whole year! That’s amazing! I’ve never dated anyone before who wanted to stay with me for more than like five minutes!”

“Blondie,” said Kurogane. “No negative thinking. Remember?”

“Oh, I know, I know! I’m just kidding, okay? So don’t get your lacy panties all in a twist about it! I know Kuro-chop has a bad habit of taking silly things super serious.” Fay laughed. Kurogane couldn’t help but smile at that. “Also, you know how I said I was gonna make dinner? Well, I kinda didn’t have time, so I ordered a pizza! I don’t really know when it’ll get here because the guy on the phone told me but I forgot, so let’s just go downstairs and wait for him. Okay?”

“Tch. Idiot,” said Kurogane, but he held out his hand. It was steady now, despite months of near-constant shaking. Things weren’t perfect today— _he_ wasn’t perfect today—but they were looking up, and he was improving. He didn’t know what would happen tomorrow or if he would ever fully recover. For now, he was just happy that Fay was here, and Fay was safe, and Fay loved him. “Let’s go wait for him together.”


End file.
